Tuesday of Holy Week: From the Rector
Benedictine Spirituality IV
The Bishop of Poitiers said of Dom Prosper Guéranger, founder and first abbot of Solesmes: “He has what every Benedictine ought to have: the constant and exclusive preoccupation with God.” And, according to Abbot of Saint-Maurice at Clervaux in Luxembourg, a house of the Solesmes congregation, the spirit that characterises the rule is one that insists on the soul’s moral development. The rule “is a manual of asceticism; it is also the code that regulates the daily life of the monastery according to the spiritual progress of those who live within its walls. Monasticism continues to be what it has always been: an attempt to live the whole Gospel, far from the world awaiting the City of which God is the architect and builder.”
Abbot Winandy picks up on a number of distinctive aspects of Benedictine monasticism as recreated by Guéranger — who had never been to a monastery when he founded Solesmes, but got all his ideas from books!
• monastic spirituality and monastic life are one and the same thing
• basic to every monastic vocation is the desire — a desire whose object is sometimes obscure and uncertain — to leave, to flee to escape from the world and creatures
• it is separation from the world that makes a monk a monk
• the life of the monk has only one purpose: to find God
• a life separated from the world and its agitation is a life of leisure, silence, peace
• asceticism is the foundation of a life completely given to God
• to gain self-mastery, silence is observed — silence imposes a barrier that “puts a stop to the sallies of a particularly refractory faculty”
• Benedict brought to the practice of asceticism a very characteristic note of discretion and of humanity
• the now classic formula associated with Benedictine monasteries, namely Ora et labora (prayer and work) omits one member — and not the least necessary one — of the traditional trilogy: prayer, reading, work
• reading is in itself completely directed to prayer.
• monastic prayer is first of all communal — the community prays together
• it is the liturgy that best orientates the whole life to God, keeping the soul eager to procure his glory and dependent on him for grace
A lot more could be said, of course; indeed, there is a very large literature on the topic and one book (currently my morning reading) looks at why the Benedictine principle is degraded by the return to an active role in the world. The message for we who are not monks or nuns is that we too need some degree of separation from the world, mental, spiritual and sometimes physical, that we need to cultivate silence and with it the reading that leads into prayer, that our work also can be consecrated to God, and that participation in communal prayer and the Church’s liturgy is essential to the life of every Christian. St Benedict also teaches us to be slow to judge, to be adaptable and to be merciful. If we have learned that much from the Rule we have learned a great deal, but some of those who have heard me on Benedict throughout Lent say that his our Holy Father’s most important instruction is No grumbling!
The Abbey of Solesmes
photo by Guillaumes72 taken from flickr under a Creative Commons licence
Monday in Holy Week: From the Rector
Benedictine Spirituality III
St Benedict says, in chapter 48 of the Rule, that “idleness is the enemy of the soul” and requires the brethren to be occupied “at certain times in manual labour and at other times in sacred reading.” The time allotted varied with the seasons. The fourth hour to the sixth were to be used for reading from Easter to Holy Cross Day; optional reading was also allowed after the sixth hour. Reading was allowed earlier, till the end of the second hour, from 14 September until the beginning of Lent, and a longer period during Lent, until the third hour. There is a reason for this. Benedict prescribes that during the days of Lent “everyone should receive a book from the library, which he should read through from the beginning.” Not everyone liked reading and one or two of the seniors were instructed to go round the monastery “during the hours when the brethren are engaged in reading, to see whether perchance they come upon some lazy brother who is engaged in doing nothing or in chatter, and is not intent upon his book, and so not only profitless to himself but leading others astray.” There was still more time for reading on a Sunday.
Sacred reading — lectio divina — is an essential element in the programme of the monastic day, and an essential part of Benedictine spirituality. It was more or less spiritual reading but with a distinct emphasis of its own. It supposed that the reader’s ears were attuned to the divine message even as he read the written word. The monk, reading the lives of the Fathers or sermons, Augustine’s Confessions or The City of God, or the writings of Gregory the Great, or monastic history and chronicles — by which I mean world history as written by monastic observers — constantly asked about God and divine action in the world. The monk was not reading for entertainment, nor for scientific study, nor even to prepare a sermon or a lesson. The monk read in all simplicity in order to learn more of divine things. Now this is difficult for us because we approach the written word differently: we are critical evaluators of what we read. This is not a false attitude, but it is a different one. Our sort of reading will not normally be a gateway to prayer. Lectio divina was. It applied to all reading — and the monks were, of course, not reading romances — the principles enshrined in the old collect for Advent II in the Prayer Book: they were to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest, and to do so for clear spiritual reasons. Meditatio and ruminatio were the key words. Reading was not limited to Christian authors and the presence and use of ancient pagan authors was justified in the monastic context only because they contributed to the linguistic and literary formation of the monks. The Latin and Greek classics had no autonomy and no other value or use. Incidentally, Benedict clearly had experienced those who were “unwilling or unable to study or read” and ordered that they were to be given some other task “so as not to be unemployed”.
Abbot Winandy of Clervaux commenting on monastic life at Cluny under Peter the Venerable quotes another distinguished Benedictine scholar, Fr Jean Leclerc. Peter’s idea of the religious life is described in these words:
Because it means the renunciation of legitimate dignities and of all that is great on earth and even in the Church, because it is “a hidden life”, the monastic state is the most lowly in Christian society, the least exalted in the hierarchy, so that Peter the Venerable can often find no other word to describe it except humility. Before this word denotes the monk’s private virtue, it indicates the place the monk occupies in the Church where he does not seek to shine. Just as we speak of “the pontiff’s majesty”, so ought we to speak of “the monk’s humility”.
Monks must have no other ambition than to be “humble and calm”; the greater the service they can render to monasticism, the more they ought to preach humility by word and example. And the life of Cluny was essentially contemplative, with no other goal than that of preparing all and leading some into the practice of contemplation: resting in God, the leisure of Mary at Jesus’ feet — not lazy idleness, the enemy of the soul, but the performance of purely spiritual acts rather than acts that are economically productive.
The same chapter of the Rule that specifies the time for reading refers to daily manual labour, and this mainly means agricultural labour, as monks “live by the work of their hands”. There are, however, other forms of work or craft available for those in poor health or not strong enough for agricultural work. The majority of monks were not priests: that only came later. When many, even the majority, were ordained, the attitude to work changed. Priests had other work to do, but many monasteries, and indeed the Cistercian reform itself, were founded in order to restore the place of daily manual labour. The monk was trained to be not an isolated ascetic but a well-balanced Christian existing in a small Christian society, which did not turn its back on the world: hence the need for monastic hospitality.
I cannot conclude without mentioning the integration of all monastic activities. Manual labour provided the necessities of life and prevented idleness. Reading led into prayer and might, incidentally, provide useful skills and models for the monastic chronicler. The daily round of community life guaranteed humility and obedience. The silence of the monastery nurtured the inner silence of the monk focussed on God. The walls and the enclosure kept out the defilement and temptations of the world. The guest-master and porter ensured that those guests who passed the gatehouse and lodge were worthy to be received in the house by those strong enough to withstand the world’s pressures. The daily office offered praise to God and, as God is everywhere present — the underlying principle of the Rule — so he is particularly watchful of those engaged in the opus Dei, the work of God which is prayer and praise. Hence the monks are told to ensure “that our mind is in harmony with our voice”. Such harmony is the mark of the true monastic life and expresses the spirit — and spirituality — of the rule of St Benedict.
photo by Benediktíni Sampor taken from flickr under a Creative Commons licence
Friday of the Fifth Week in Lent: From the Rector
Benedictine Spirituality II
For Europe, as it was being shaped into Christian Europe, it was the cloister that guaranteed the continuity of an authentic Christian presence and it was the monks who, increasingly backed by a broad political and social consensus, propagated the idea that the only true Christians were monks. Only in the monastery were the principles taught by Jesus truly realised: obedience, humility and renunciation of the world. The monastic community was an eschatological and angelic community, geared towards the end time, though existing in the mean time, and providing a glimpse, and indeed more than a glimpse, of the heavenly Church and the angelic hierarchy around the throne. John Cassian taught that the coenobitic community took its rise in the days of the apostles: the monastery was the expression of the apostolic and Pentecostal Church.
There were other strands. There were inevitably those who complied only with the minimum requirements of the faith and embraced wholeheartedly the liberty that the Apostle conferred because of weakness (as we have seen in the Rule). This was a concession which in some minds, such as John Cassian’s, led to a cooling of the faith and a relaxing of strictness. There were also those who fled the corruption of the world, as Benedict had, to become hermits, wedded to strict asceticism. Hermits aspired to what we might call a “free experience of God”. It was seen as the crowning reward of the solitary life. In Benedict’s hands it was consciously organised into coenobitic monasticism and the quest for God was placed in the hands of a religious superior. We might say that ascetic imitation, based on the teaching of the Rule and the example of other senior monks, replaced ascetic initiative, and the aspirant, postulant and novice are, therefore, urged to surrender their will to their religious superior and to imitate their seniors. The fifth to seventh centuries generated at least thirty monastic rules marked by borrowing, adaptation, rewriting and re-elaboration, much of it the fruit of the experience of the monastic life. The monastery was not intended to be a place of culture, a bastion against the disintegration and destruction that followed the Lombardic invasion of Italy, but as the rules provided that monks should be able to read, so monasteries became havens of literacy. There was a strict connection between the ability to read and the religious life of the monk. Western monastic rules generally set aside two or three hours daily for spiritual reading, and reading was the necessary preliminary to meditation, the oral repetition of biblical texts committed to memory. And, of course, the monastery needed to have a library, a school and a scriptorium — hence it became an exclusive and culturally privileged place.
photo by Digital Library @ Villanova University taken from flickr under a Creative Commons licence
Holy Week at SBG 2011
Sunday, April 17th — Palm Sunday
9.00 a.m. Holy Communion
11.00 a.m. Blessing of the Palms in the Chapel of the Charterhouse, Charterhouse Square (By kind
permission of the Master). Entry to the Chapel from 10.45 a.m.
Hosanna to the Son of David Weelkes
Pueri Hebraeorum Victoria
11.15 a.m. The Palm Procession from the Charterhouse to the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the
Great
11.30 a.m. The Solemn Eucharist of the Passion of the Lord Jesus Christ
Missa Quarti toni Victoria
The Passion Victoria
6.30 p.m. Into the Hands of Sinners: A Processional Sequence on the Passion
Hosanna to the Son of David Weelkes
Vinea mea electa Poulenc
O sacrum convivium Tallis
O vos omnes Cassals
Astiterunt reges terræ Victoria
Civitas sancti tui Byrd
April 18th, Monday in Holy Week
8.30 a.m. Holy Communion
12.30 p.m. Holy Communion
April 19th, Tuesday in Holy Week
8.30 a.m. Holy Communion
12.30 p.m. Holy Communion
April 20th, Wednesday in Holy Week
8.30 a.m. Holy Communion
12.30 p.m. Holy Communion
April 21st, Maundy Thursday
8.30 a.m. Holy Communion
7.30 p.m. Solemn Eucharist followed by an Hour’s Watch in the Lady Chapel
Messe cum jubilo (Kyrie & Gloria) Duruflé
Ubi caritas chant
April 22nd, Good Friday
11.30 a.m. Distribution of the Butterworth Charity (Churchyard)
12 noon The Solemn Liturgy of the Passion of the Lord
The Passion Victoria
Reproaches chant
Christus factus est Bruckner
Crux fidelis King John of Portugal
7.00 p.m. Tenebrae
Responsories Victoria
Christus factus est Bruckner
April 23rd, Holy Saturday – Easter Eve
9.00 p.m. The Easter Vigil
The Vigil begins with the lighting of the new fire in the Cloister.
Missa Sancti Nicolai (Gloria) Haydn
Like as the hart Howells
Victimae paschali laudes Victoria
Te Deum (Collegium Regale) Howells
April 24th, Easter Day: The Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ
9.00 a.m. Holy Communion
Preacher: The Administrator
11.00 a.m. The Solemn Eucharist (and Easter egg hunt)
Vidi aquam chant
Coronation Mass Mozart
Sequence: Victimae paschali laudes
Haec dies Byrd
6.30 p.m. Solemn Easter Vespers and Procession
Missa Papae Marcelli (Kyrie ) Palestrina
Magnificat octavi toni Morales
Victimae Paschali Laudes Victoria
Haec dies Byrd
Regina Caeli Victori
Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent: From the Rector
Benedictine Spirituality I
I want to conclude this Lenten series by thinking about Benedictine spirituality in the modern world.
“Monks and monasteries,” wrote Giovanni Miccoli in 1987, “long ago ceased to be part of the common experience of the inhabitants of Europe. They have not ceased to exist, but they are no longer ordinarily, recurrently encountered in its historical landscape.” The monasteries and priories of the past — Cluniac, Cistercian, Carthusian, Camaldolese, Vallombrosan — that populated the countryside by the thousand in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are now reduced to a few hundred in the entire world. The monks that populate them, much diminished in number, remain as a silent presence, rarely encountered, even by us Christians, and often unnoticed. There was no sudden catastrophe such as that which took away the dinosaurs. There was a slow decline, as monastic life no longer met the spiritual needs of the church, and then the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the age of revolutions, accelerated and completed a process begun long before, and made the disappearance of monasticism appear artificial — which it wasn’t. “In reality,” Miccoli wrote, “profound transformations in society had combined with radical changes in ways of living and conceiving the Christian presence in history.” In addition, post-Reformation ecclesiastical policies formulated in Rome favoured other and more flexible instruments for religious action, and after Trent the Roman Church applied itself to the promotion of new religious orders, the creation of seminaries, and the reform of the episcopate and priesthood to make it an effective tool for evangelisation. Though not entirely lacking a missionary dimension, Benedictine monasticism in its pure form is not well-suited to the mission field.
Before we move on — and in order to meet a possible objection that monasticism has a missionary dimension — let me pick up on something from the teachings of Abbot Paul Delatte of Solesmes. He points out that if the activities of the missionary monks took them outside of the cloister, one of their first goals was the establishment of new centres of monastic life. “The evangelist,” he wrote, “was the monastery itself, preacher with a hundred voices that were silent neither by day nor by night.” It was not then the apostolate of a single monk but of the whole monastic community and its role — and we may feel that this is echoed by at least some of our cathedrals and historic churches, such as Saint Bartholomew the Great — consisted less in action than in a presence, a silent, eloquent preaching of the true Christian life, in which prayer, the liturgy, and good works were the various expressions of a single Christian reality. Dom Delatte said that the purpose of monasteries was not to spread the faith by going outside of the monastery, but to attract, to draw in, by implanting a religious life and culture able to transform a people profoundly from within. The monastery was the medium and the message.
photo by samuel_belknap taken from flickr under a Creative Commons licence
Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Lent: From the Rector
The Wisdom of St Benedict III
We all make mistakes. One of the forms of confession that we use admits that we sin “through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault.” St Benedict sees it is an act of humility to acknowledge a mistake caused by negligence, by what he terms “want of care”. He thinks that lack of humility, evidenced by failure to acknowledge a fault, is more serious.
From an illuminated manuscript in the British Museum
Chapter 45 – Mistakes in the Oratory
If anyone makes a mistake while reciting a psalm, responsory, antiphon or lesson, and does not humble himself on the spot in the presence of all to make up for it, he must undergo greater punishment, because he would not by humility correct the fault he committed by want of care.
Benedict rightly differentiates between offences caused by “want of care” and those that involve a matter of sin. Chapter 46 covers brothers working in “the kitchen, the storeroom, the pantry, the bakery or the garden” who do something wrong, or break something, or lose something, or get into any sort of trouble. They should acknowledge this fault “before the Abbot and community”. You may remember the “chapter of faults” in The Nun’s Story in which these types of fault were acknowledged, but sin was for the confessional.
Chapter 46 – matters of sin
If, however, it is a matter of sin and the fault is a hidden one of the soul, let him manifest it only to the Abbot or to spiritual seniors, who will know how to heal their own and others’ wounds without uncovering them and making them public.
Benedict recognises that everyone is not able to sing or read in such a way that others may be edified.
Chapter 38 – the weekly reader at meals
The brethren, however, are not to read or sing just in their turn, but only those who are edifying to hear.
Chapter 47 – concerned with the work of God
The intoning of psalms and antiphons after the Abbot is to be done in due order by those told to do so. No one may take on himself to sing or read unless he can perform that duty to the edification of the hearers; it should be done with humility, gravity and reverence, and only by one whom the Abbot has told to do it.
photo by Edith OSB taken from flickr under a Creative Commons licence
Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Lent: From the Rector
The Wisdom of St Benedict II
As we saw yesterday, Benedict, in making a Rule that is of general application, allows considerable discretion to the Abbot in making allowance for weakness or special need. Actually, although Benedict sets down some pretty draconian penalties, including corporal punishment, though he also moderates it by saying “every age and understanding ought to have its own proper treatment” before providing that boys or youths, who cannot appreciate the significance of excommunication, are to be punished “by severe fasting or else corrected by sharp stripes, for their own good.” Indeed, when Benedict is severe it is because punishment is all about correction of faults, for the good of the person being corrected. His understanding of human weakness is certainly to be found in chapter 40:
Chapter 40 – The Drink Allowance
‘Each one has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that’ (1 Cor. 7), and so it is with some hesitation that the quantity of other people’s food or drink is regulated by us. However, taking into account the feebleness of the weak, we consider that half a pint of wine is sufficient for each daily. Those to whom God gives the power to abstain may be sure that they will have their own reward. If the local conditions or the work or summer heat demand more, it can be left to the judgment of the superior, provided always that no excess or drunkenness finds its way in.
We do indeed read that wine is not the drink for monks, but as monks nowadays cannot be brought to see this, let us agree at any rate on this: that we do not drink to the full, but sparingly, for ‘wine makes even the wise to fall away’ (Ecclus. 19). When the local conditions are such that not even this allowance is available, but only much less or even none at all, then let those who live there bless God and not grumble. Above all we urge that they keep free from complaints.
Fresco in St. Benedict's Abbey, Atchison, Kansas
photo by Randy OHC taken from flickr under a Creative Commons licence
